Emergency rooms are notorious for their long waiting times – that’s pretty common knowledge. But now the Hospitals of Central Connecticut are looking to a new medical app for the iPhone to help improve their emergency room wait times. Having spent a fair amount of time recently working in an emergency room, I (and probably everyone with similar experiences) can assure you that no one – physicians, nurses, administrators – want it to be that way. Much effort has been made in improving patient triage, workflow management, and other areas of opportunity that could increase the efficiency with which a patient is managed when they get to the emergency room. Some emergency rooms, like Hospital of Central Connecticut, are now looking to improve efficiency even before the patient arrives at the emergency room. The New Britain Herald reports that a new medical app released for the iPhone this week allows patients to view waiting times for the emergency rooms at two local hospitals in the hopes that patients with non-emergent complaints will head to the less crowded ER.

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The Wall Street Journal has a great article mentioning most of the current mobile electronic personal health records for the iPhone and how they are being used. The article talks about the usefulness of these mobile records and also tells of some of their pitfalls.

One of the biggest pitfalls mentioned is how users have to input their own medical data manually.  Currently some insurance companies and hospitals offer tethered systems, where they will automatically update your personal health records.  Once this becomes more common there should be a greater usage of these mobile platforms.  Although they are improving, these tethered systems often do not communicate well with each other.  This is a topic we’ll discuss on this site in the future since it’s a personal interest of mine.

Polka, TheCarrot.com and Ringful are among a number of new services that allow consumers to input their medical information and track their conditions using a smart phone. Particularly for the small but growing number of people who use electronic health records, phone applications are appealing because they can allow mobile access to personal information.

The market is nascent, however. Currently, only about 3% of U.S. consumers put their medical information online in personal-health records, according to Forrester Research. It’s mainly up to consumers to accurately log their own health data…..

…..With AllOne Health’s application called AllOne Mobile, users can view their medial history on the go, see prescription history and pharmacy information and receive alerts on medical appointments. It gives mobile access to existing personal-health records maintained by participating health plans and for users of Microsoft’s HealthVault program. But right now the application is view-only; users can make changes to their health records using the health plans’ Web interfaces, but not directly from the phone. (The company says it plans on adding this feature next year.)

We’re currently still waiting to see when Apple will attempt to directly link its mobile devices to possible health care monitoring devices.  Although AirStip OB provides some sort of monitoring system, its still not an example of a completely mobile one.  This might be changing with Apple’s increasing interest in the fitness arena, especially in regards to it’s partnership with Nike.  According to Apple Insider, a iPod nano-compatible heart rate monitor is already on the way.

Mobihealthnews actually had this great find when looking at patents uncovered by Apple Insider.  These patents are for other vital sign monitoring, not just heart rate.  Pulse Ox and temp appear to be the other two vital sign monitoring they are investigating.  This type of monitoring system could definitely be useful in a mobile setting when providing long term care for chronic conditions.  A system that can check your pulse ox, HR, and temp, and then log the results to be viewed later in an easy to read format could be useful for patients suffering chronic conditions, such as COPD and certain arrhythmias.

At the end of the day though, I’m still holding out hope for the iPhone – blue tooth stethoscope connection.  Imagine patients being able to place a stethoscope in the correct orientation on their body, record the sound on their iPhone, and then upload it to their doc.  Now THAT is what I’d call mobile health care monitoring.

In a recent study presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) researchers showed how the DICOM viewer, OsiriX, can effectively help diagnose acute appendicitis.

This doesn’t come as much of a surprise to us.  We reviewed OsiriX a few months ago and were definitely fans of this DICOM viewer then.

My only issue is with the lack of information provided in the study.  You can view the abstract of the study but the full study is currently not yet published.  Yes, the findings are interesting, but lets hold back some of the excitement until we get more information.  I’ve seen multiple medical and non medical outlets reporting on this story, but I don’t think they are looking at how the study itself was performed in detail.  The main points mentioned in the abstract were the following:

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There is a great article in the telegraph talking about a possible app in the works that will allow for the diagnosis of respiratory disease based on a simple cough.  I thought this was a joke until I read the bottom of the article.  The firm researching this diagnosing methodology has some serious backing in the form of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the tune of $100,000.  The foundation is backing this possible method of diagnosing due to the incidence of pneumonia in developing countries.

The Telegraph:

Software being developed by American and Australian scientists will hopefully allow patients simply to cough into their phone, and it will tell them whether they have cold, flu, pneumonia or other respiratory diseases.

Whether a cough is dry or wet, or “productive” or “non-productive” (referring to the presence of mucus on the lungs), can give a doctor information about what is causing that cough, for example whether it is caused by a bacterial or a viral infection……….

The software is currently run on a computer, but it is anticipated that it could be rewritten as a smartphone application.

If they are able to get this algorithm to actually work, this could have some serious implications beyond helping those in developing countries.  This could be great for public health as a whole here in the US, especially since a cough is one of the most common presenting symptoms.  The only problem is, most coughs are caused by viral respiratory tract infections, so it would be crucial for this software to be able to distinguish between a bacterial and viral infection.  How in the world would software be able to do this based solely on acoustics? They explain a little of this in the article, but it should be fun to find out.  We’ll definitely be following this story in the future.